5 stars
First Sentence: “I’m telling you, you won’t find better foodstuffs anywhere in Shu, or Prospect or Han for that matter!”
Thoughts: Cyllan the drover girl from the previous book is in Shu province for the Quarter-Day Festival. When she stops in a tavern for lunch, she sees a young man getting ripped off by a fake fortuneteller. (She knows what real fortunetelling looks like because she can do it.) Cyllan catches the man as he’s leaving and lets him know the person he just paid all that money to was a fraud. The man asks her to read his fortune instead. She refuses, but he chases her down and persuades her. Before she can use her talents, though, a warp storm hits. Cyllan and the young man are caught up in it.
When they come to, they find themselves floating in the ocean. That’s bad. What’s worse is that the young man is Drachea, heir to the Margrave of Shu, which means if he drowns that’s all kinds of trouble for Cyllan. She carries him to shore with the help of the fanaani, telepathic seals that also made a brief appearance in The Initiate. The shore is at the foot of a tall cliff. Well that’s no help! Wait, there’s a path leading up the cliff. A narrow, steep path, but it’s a way up at least. Cyllan starts up the narrow path while Drachea whines behind her.
At the top of the cliff is the Castle of the Star Peninsula. Civilization at last! Except, no. The Star Peninsula had been incommunicado for several months. There’s an odd light in the sky, and the sun never rose even though they climbed up the path long enough for it to. Inside things are even stranger. There’s no one around. Well, there’s one person: Tarod. He explains to them that they’re stuck outside time, but won’t tell them how it happened. We know, though, because we read the previous book and know what lengths Tarod’s desperation drove him to when the Circle tried to execute him.
Since Drachea and Cyllan managed to breach the time-barrier, they might be of some use to Tarod. Maybe they can get into the Marble Hall and retrieve his soul-stone so he can restart time. Neither of them are too keen to help Tarod, though, especially after Drachea goes into the High Initiate’s office and finds the notes revealing Tarod to be an incarnation of Chaos.
Cyllan doesn’t quite believe the notes, though. She met Tarod before and he didn’t seem that bad. Then, after a bout of questionable sexytimes in Tarod’s tower, she’s more inclined to Drachea’s side. However, when she tells Drachea what happened up there, the spoiled rich boy turns on her and calls her all sorts of names. That decided Cyllan. She went back up the tower for more sexytimes and plotting how to get the soul-stone back.
The plotting works and Cyllan recovers the stone. Time restarts at the point in stopped but now there are two extra people in the Marble Hall. Keridil is very confused. He locks up Tarod, finds rooms for his sudden guests, and sits down to figure all this out. Cyllan begins planning how to retrieve Tarod and the soul-stone while Drachea tries to convince Keridil that he deserves to become an Initiate because he’s been a Very Good Boy bringing back the Incarnation of Chaos and all.
Meanwhile Sashka, Tarod’s treacherous ex-girlfriend, sinks her claws deeper into Keridil. They’re engaged now, which should make her happy but it doesn’t. She’s quite unhappy, in fact, because Tarod found a new love in Cyllan who isn’t even pretty or rich like Sashka. She begins her own schemes against Tarod and Cyllan because she’s a manipulative skank and I don’t like her.
Then, thanks to a telepathic cat, all hell breaks loose.
The Eclectic Reviewer 